Found deep in forests, back yards and decks
Laden with delight for the pallet
Sturdy enough for multiple elbows
Birth place of splinters
This is the riddle for this week.
Any guesses? The prize is a free
story from Wormhole Electric's vast library of original stories. Put your
answer in the comments and I'll get back to you! No strings attached, no
sharing of your email address, no asking you to join this or that or the other.
Just straight clean fun. So go ahead! Take a chance. I beat your language
skills are better than you think!
Good Morning, Don.
I hope that all is finally
getting settled in your part of the world. So how is the new kitchen? Sipping
coffee in it yet? I just heard yesterday that your friend and former editor for
Wormhole, Nick Kitto, accepted a posting as a school director in Hungary. Don't
the two of you co-own a boat and spend your summers sailing together?
In between grading and committee
meetings this week I was able to squeeze in a few more pages on the Wired
Generation. But most of what I found is applicable to any age.
It is becoming apparent that
there is an increase in mental stress and fatigue. In part, this is due to the
immediacy of communication thanks to technology: new unresolved tasks keep
popping up for us to do via email, cell phone, twitter and/or all the other
social medias we all subscribe to. This is leading to a new culture of "mashup"
according to Ruskoff in his book, Present Shock. Accessibility due to
Face Book puts us in contact with our past, opens us to our current friends, asks
us to evaluate future friends all in the space of a couple of minutes. Everything
is colliding at once leaving us no time to process; we are no longer able to
leave the past behind us so it interferes with our present while companies now
have enough information about us that they are able to predict our future
spending habits.
So how does this affect us? With
the past competing with the present, we are not able to re-invent ourselves
from day to day. The lessons learned are lost in the demands and immediacy of
now. Our "story" is gone. On top of that, Ruskoff feels that our
drive for the latest and greatest had led us to not owning anything. We don't
own music, we access it in the cloud; we don't own books, we download or cloud
books and stories. We are becoming a society that only has "the right to access".
Ruskoff presents a gloomy
picture! I'm not sure what the answer is, except to take time off and journal
about the week and the lessons learned. I don't know that this is a process
that the Wired Generation has any concept of. I know that I have students write
how they are going to change their responses to an assignment after they've had
time to work on it and review their peers' assignments. Usually I get a much
better essay in the end.
I also read that the Wired
Generation wants to work toward perfection as much as possible so they don't
have to go back and redo the assignment. I can appreciate that. Redoing is a
bit humbling – maybe they didn't understand the assignment, or they wrote it
off and did the minimum and hoped for a good grade, or maybe they didn't have
good enough vocabulary and grammar which means they're not as smart as they
want others to think they are. These are the most common reasons I hear and
remember from my days in school. Is there an answer? Some say: redo the
assignment until you get it right; others say: learn the lesson and apply it to the next
assignment.
To avoid the pressure and sense
of "have to" and "should have" that comes with being a
perfectionist, I've decided to be an "Excellentist" instead. I've
noticed that the pressure is off my shoulders and there is a sense of relief. Isn't
it amazing how we can use language to create pressure or release it.
Look for the newest Wormhole Electric
Ezine on Amazon. Transport 31 is now available! Colby, Ariel and the Riddles!
Great offerings this month! Colby has the "Electric Chicken", Ariel
steps up the battle for the airland, and Don and I present the Riddles!
Glorious Fun!
Have a great week, Folks.
Carolyn
Images
downloaded from Google Images
Fig 1 – Stress retrieved from www.themarketingmaven.com
Fig 2 – Jonathan Mendez's blog: Mashups
retrieved from www.optimizeandprophesize.com
Fig 3 – Perfection: Good enough is never
good enough Retrieved from todaymade.com
Fig 4 -- Transport 31 created by L.
Varvel
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